Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Unfair taxes and policies’ by PIA management forcing pilots to stay on ground

Pilots working for the
Pakistan International Airline have announced unanimously that they will stop
flying if the national airline’s management continues to implement ‘unfair and
unjust’ taxation policy on their salaries.

The country’s national
airline has been in the doldrums due to management, administrative and
financial issues and this move by the pilots was the latest blow to the already
troubled organization. Like most of its current problems, this particular move
was also of PIA Management’s own doing.

Pilots have complained that
they are charged inflated amount of taxes on their salaries – so much that in
most cases their ‘take home’ amount is much less than the tax they have to
returned to the organization. The situation is a stark contrast to some of the
Private airlines of the country. For instance, according to sources, two other
national airlines’ pilots only pay Rs.19,000 to Rs.30,000 on their salaries
whereas a PIA pilot pays a remarkable average of Rs.200,00 to Rs.350,000 PM tax
on a similar salary scale ie 10 times more than Private airline’s Pilots.

One of PIA’S Pilot said; “These
are our jobs. We don’t work hard to pay back the government only. We have
families to run, kids to look after. If more than half of our hard earned
salaries, which we earn staying away from home mostly, goes down in tax, what
will we take home? How will we run our houses? Enough is enough. We will not
fly until the taxation system is made fair and justifiable, when we try to
leave airline, they don’t release us at the same time.”

In response to the
situation, Pakistan Air Line Pilots’ Association President, Captain Amir Hashmi
said: “I am trying to solve this situation amicably by talking to my colleagues
and convincing them to continue flying but the PIA management is not interested
in finding a fair solution to this. They have failed to clarify the taxation policy
and have created a lot of confusion among the pilots. I can only stop the
movement to a certain extent but by the looks of things, it has gone too far
now. We need a fair solution to the matter immediately by either returning the
over taxed money or charging the same from private airline’s Pilots, so that we
do not feel the step brotherly treatment from Govt. And management.”

“To make matters worse, the board
of directors have given a go ahead to issue contracts to those pilots who have
contacts and are in the good books of high officials against PALPA'S agreement
with management.

“Internationally, pilots are
either given term contracts or hired permanently. Only one system is followed
in contrast to PIA where both are being done based on favouritism. This
situation gives the fair pilots all the more reason to be agitated by the
current situation.”

Captain Hashmi said that
despite PIA’s frailties, PALPA has continued to offer their support to the
airline. The association plans to offer the management to reduce their principal
office bearers’ and management pilots’ allowances by 25%.

“We planned this goodwill
gesture only to show to the upper management that despite their unfair and
unjust stances against us, we still care for the organization which used to be
a matter of pride for us. Unfortunately, the top management does not bother
reciprocating the goodwill and continues to create problems not just for the
pilots but also for the airline as a whole. It’s a woeful situation.”

According to reports, PIA
has suffered accumulative losses of more than Rs 200 billion owing to several
operational and administrative deficiencies. Very recently, the national
carrier also had to return four of its aircrafts after their lease ended, but
interestingly; immediately after releasing the wet leased aircrafts, the
national airline brought three of its technically grounded aircrafts on line.

“This move was very strange
as, if this was possible in the first place, then why did PIA lease the foreign
aircrafts as ‘wet lease’ is unviable for any established airline?” said Captain
Hashmi.

Also, despite the national
airline’s woeful financial health, it hired two additional general managers
adding to its already over staffed management of 16 Directors, 44 GMs and 92
DGMs. It is reported that the average salaries of these general managers are up
to Rs.1,800,000 to Rs.2,200,000.The rules designed by the Public Procurement
Regulatory Authority (PEPRA), the body that legislates public hiring, n state
that No openings can be filled without an advertisement.

“The hiring of the GMs was
done against the rules and only to appease those who were in the good books of
the top management of the PIA. The hiring was not done on the basis of merit
while Planes are running empty on once the most lucrative routes, mainly due to
cost cutting measures on account of Revenue paying customers only,” said
Captain Hashmi.

If the national airline can
spend such massive amounts of money to hire general managers without any airline
experience, the question arises about their implementation of strange and
unjustified tax policies for the pilots, who are supposedly the airline’s
biggest strategic and operational assets.

0
comments:

Post a Comment

About Karachi Chronicles:

Karachi Chronicles, as the name suggests is a website that talks about latest events taking place within the country and those that have us involving in a dialogue. These events and topics vary from being associated with sports, lifestyle, fashion, movies, and marketing campaigns. You can join us and contribute to our platform of story telling by sending email to karachichronicleblog@gmail.com

Follow Google+ Page

Search This Blog

Subscribe

Do you want fresh and hot updates about us? Then subscribe to our Feeds.